Gardening in Montreal's Botanical Garden

My tomato plant keeps teasing me. It promises me a great bounty and produces flower after flower, but without any pollinating friends around, these would-be fruits soon wither and fall. The tomato plant just stands there on my balcony, mocking me every time I come back from the supermarket with store-bought tomatoes.
Thankfully, it’s a different story at the collective garden. Note that it’s a collective, not a community garden. Everyone shares a common garden, as opposed to each person owning a small plot. There, our tomato plants behave, producing plump tomatoes bigger than your fist. And we have other things too, from cucumbers, camomile, cabbage and carrots, to basil, beans and beets. Enough beets to even make Dwight Schrute proud. We have parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, and enough herbs to make 3 more Simon & Garfunkel songs.

The best part is that the garden is located inside Montreal’s Botanical Garden. We work surrounded by vibrant flowers while the song sparrows, catbirds and goldfinches keep us company. Even foxes come visit from time to time. They also eat from thyme to thyme. It’s a wonderful, lush paradise that I share with happy people.

There's something intrinsically beautiful and photogenic about gardens. I don't know what it is. Sweaty gardeners full of soil? I'm not sure. But just looking at colourful gardening pictures gives me the same fuzzy feeling that I get when actually gardening. Claudia and I have this secret fantasy of moving away from the city and starting our little farm. We'd have cats, lots of veggies, and never any pests. I'd have a little woodworking and leatherworking workshop in the back. And somehow I'd find a way to still photograph people. We could make a farm-studio thing where I'd do farmer photoshoots. That's a thing right?

If farmer photoshoots don't sound like your cup of tea, check out the links below where you might find some photography that's a bit more to your liking.

Thanks for reading! Remember you can always contact me if you want to discuss anything.